Cold Process Beer Soap help

[Hippie13]

I'm looking to make a cold process bar using Sam Adams Octoberfest. I've made another beer soap using Kentucky Ale Bourbon Barrel by freezing the beer and adding the lye to the beer cubes so they would melt but not burn the sugars. The big problem I had was the Bourbon Barrel scent really didn't come through.

I really want the Octoberfest scent to come through on this bar. Any suggestions or tips on how to do that? Or oil blends that will help accent the scent of the beer?

 

[Kamahido]

The sodium hydroxide takes pretty much all scents that are not essential oils or fragrance oils formulated for soap. If you want your soap to smell like beer you will have to add a beer fragrance oil.

 

[shunt2011]

For the most part you will not get any scent from additives used in soapmaking. You'll need to use a fragrance oil to get any beer scent.

 

[Arimara]

What they said. Lye totally destroys whatever scent molecules are in a beer. It sucks but what can you do?

 

[BrewerGeorge]

There's a big discussion in brewing circles now about how just oxygen hurts malt flavor and aroma. If oxygen causes problems, you can imagine what lye does. Like everyone else is saying, you'll need a fragrance oil.

 

[mommycarlson]

I'm looking to make a cold process bar using Sam Adams Octoberfest. I've made another beer soap using Kentucky Ale Bourbon Barrel by freezing the beer and adding the lye to the beer cubes so they would melt but not burn the sugars. The big problem I had was the Bourbon Barrel scent really didn't come through.

I really want the Octoberfest scent to come through on this bar. Any suggestions or tips on how to do that? Or oil blends that will help accent the scent of the beer?

Hi Hippie13,
Pretty much what the others have said. I have used several beer FO's and have found that I can't get a true beer smell, they all seem sweet and not at all beer scented. I have given up on beer FO's and have gone to scenting my beer soaps with a masculine FO.

 

[earlene]

My first (and only) beer soap smelled like beer for a long time to me, but eventually the beer odor did diminish to a degree. I think it's more a case of a sensitive nose than a strong beer. All I used was some very old beer of some generic brand we had left over from our restaurant. It was plain old Coors (I just went and checked in the garage). We don't drink beer and the guy who helped us move missed a six-pack meant for him, so it sat around for a few years before I decided to make soap with it. In fact I still have 5 bottles of it left and guess I could make more beer soap with it for my brothers. Incidentally, I did not use a fragrance in that beer soap and probably will not in the future to test how my brothers' noses pick or don't pick up on the scent. My husband who smoked for decades, said he has virtually no sense of smell anymore, so he's no help when it comes to ID'ing odors.

If you think the technique of how to prepare the beer itself could play a part (I don't know since I only made it once), I'll tell you what I did in case it may matter. I let the bottle of beer go flat over a couple of days, then slowly added the NaOH crystals to the flat beer. I did not boil it down as some people recommend, as I had not read of that process at the time. I did not freeze, just refrigerated it for a couple of days, so the temperature was probably at about 35°- 40°F when I started adding the lye.